Spiders Help Create Skin Graphs

The secret to creating artificial skin might be spider silk, researchers now suggest.

Skin grafts are vital for treating burn victims and other patients. For instance, chronic wounds such as bedsores in hospitalized patients afflict 6.5 million in the United States alone for estimated costs of $25 billion annually.

Instead of using skin from a body for a graft, scientists are investigating artificial skin. Ideally such a graft would be of a material tolerated by the body, have skin cells embedded within it to replace lost tissue, degrade safely over time as the new skin grows in and be strong enough to withstand all the rigors ordinary skin experiences. Materials investigated until now did not seem strong enough for the task, said tissue engineer Hanna Wendt at Medical School Hannover in Germany.

The extraordinary strength and stretchiness of spider silk “are important factors for easy handling and transfer of many kinds of implants,” Wendt said. In addition, unlike silk from silkworms, that from spiders apparently does not trigger the body’s rejection reactions.